Patrick Horn, M.D., Ph.D., is exiting Albireo Pharma just a few months into the marketing of the biopharma's rare liver disease drug.
The FDA and European regulators approved the treatment, sold as Bylvay, within days of each other in July. The oral drug is the first treatment for pruritus in patients with progressive familial intrahepatic cholestasis, and the med was available just a few days of the approval, the company said.
In his 3.5 years with the company, Horn, who was the chief medical officer, completed the phase 3 study that led to Bylvay's approval and helped initiate two ongoing pivotal studies in other conditions, Alagille syndrome and biliary atresia.
If given the green light in those diseases, too, Bylvay could become a blockbuster drug before the world rings in 2030, the company said. The drug has distribution and supply partners in Central and Eastern Europe, Israel, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Japan and elsewhere.
RELATED: Albireo's rare liver disease drug Bylvay scores back-to-back approvals in US, Europe
Horn notified the Boston biopharma Dec. 3 that he would leave by the end of the year for a different job. His resignation was "not the result of any disagreement regarding any matter relating to Albireo’s operations, policies or practices," the company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
Temporarily taking over R&D operations will be co-founder and Chief Scientific Officer Jan Mattsson, Ph.D.
Prior to Albireo, Horn was a senior vice president at Orphan Technologies for less than a year and before that spent seven years at TetraPhase Pharmaceuticals, where he was chief medical officer.